‘Mother would gather all of us employees, as few as we were in that little hallway, and we would actually take hands. And she would offer this spontaneous prayer asking for the Lord’s blessing on EWTN,’ Father Joseph Mary Wolfe recollected.
When Mother Angelica officially launched the Eternal Word Television Network (EWTN) on Aug. 15, 1981, she purposefully chose the Solemnity of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary to place her fledgling broadcast enterprise under Our Lady’s protection.
Decades later, that founding date remains the spiritual anchor of the network’s identity. Every year on or around Aug. 15, staff and clergy gather to continue an annual tradition that connects EWTN’s global presence back to its humble beginnings: a Eucharistic procession through the original campus hallways to bless the entire facility.
For Father Joseph Mary Wolfe, chaplain at EWTN, those annual blessings always evoke memories of the network’s early years, when the operation ran out of a converted garage studio with just two dozen employees working on a limited budget.
“Every year on Aug. 15 or thereabouts, we bless the entire facility. We have a Eucharistic procession,” Father Joseph Mary, recalled. “And as we’re passing through this hallway
